Phillosophically Speaking: Lost at C-X=Z: the Common Core conundrum

The current debate over the Common Core standards for students, and the inclusion of one of its math questions in a recent Facts article, dredged up some memories of my rather spotty career as a junior high and high school student many moons ago — uncomfortable memories I’d rather not have, but do.

The question went like this: “Justin’s car can travel 77 1/2 miles with 3 1/10 gallons of gas. Kim’s car can travel 99 1/5 with 3 1/5 gallons of gas. At those rates, how far can each car travel with 1 gallon of gas?”

It reminded me of perhaps my favorite word problem in school, which, as best as I can recall, went like this: you’re travelling at 22 ½ miles per hour upstream on a Mississippi River steamboat, against a current going 9 ¼ miles-per-hour downstream. Query: how long will it take you to reach St. Louis?

After much puzzling over the steamboat question, I came up with an obvious answer: I should never become a steamboat captain on the Mississippi River.

As for the one about gas, well, I guess that’s why I usually keep some in a 1-gallon container under the hood of my VW Bug. For me it’s easier than trying to answer the question, and even if I do run out of gas, I’m ready to deal with it.

Of course for many students back then, and perhaps for many today, the perennial question about these questions is usually the same: “When will we ever need this stuff?” and in February, my fellow Facts guest columnist, Esther Cepeda, who was once a high school algebra teacher, tried to answer that question in her column, “Why math? Why not?”

For her the answer was always the same: algebra was valuable for solving concrete problems by thinking in the abstract, “a skill every single one of us needs to navigate our lives.”

That’s probably true, but for some of us, some kinds of abstract thinking remain just that — abstract — and maybe that’s one of the reasons I played chess only once, and have never played since. Like cards, it bored me.

I did master the multiplication tables with relative ease, and still know that 6 times 8 is 48 — I think — but when it came to the math I encountered in junior high and high school, and saw that x+y=z, suddenly I was lost.

It’s been said that higher math is like learning another language, and I knew what that meant. It seemed like I’d entered the tomb of King Tut, and was trying to decipher hieroglyphics.

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After two years in Algebra 1, and much help from my patient father, I was able to squeak by with a D, but then, when I tried chemistry, I lasted just long enough to get a shot of ammonia up my nose in one of the experiments before my mom pulled me out so I wouldn’t have an F looming on my accumulative record.

By the time I entered college, I knew I was better at putting words together than figuring out why c=y-z, but there was a glitch: I needed some sort of non-humanities class to graduate.

Fortunately, earth science saved me, since (as faithful readers of my column will know) I had and still have a fascination with earthquakes and meteors and events that go bump in the night. I get alluvial fans.

But then, when I decided to teach high school English, there was another problem: I needed to pass CBEST, the California Basic Educational Skills Test, which includes a math section.

After taking it the first time as a trial run, expecting to blow the math (which I did), I took it again.

It seemed easier the second time around, either because I’d studied, or it was.

These days I’ve come to the conclusion that each of us has a mind that works in its own special way.

If there’s one fact I’ve learned in almost seven years of marriage it’s that.

And even though I spent almost 20 years teaching in public schools, I have many reservations about Cores that are Common, and trying to squeeze every student into standardized boxes, and bubbles they need to fill in.

We all have our own strengths and weaknesses, and I’d like to see schools that recognize that fact.

Perhaps if I do have one take-away from my struggles with math, it’s the practice it gave me in failure.

For me it’s clear: if you’re not willing to fail, there’s no chance of success.

Nevertheless, I’m going to continue paying my tax man to crunch the numbers every year. But I’ve noticed that even he lets his computer or calculator do most of the math.

Phill Courtney is a Redlands resident. He can be reached at pjcourtney@earthlink.net